


Backdoor Woman

by just_about_nothing



Category: Original Work
Genre: Albuquerque, Blow Jobs, England (Country), F/M, Fans, Parent Death, Science Fiction, Swearing, Tags Are Hard, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7215346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_about_nothing/pseuds/just_about_nothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a sharp intake of breath on the other side. “<i>I’m married</i>.”</p><p>“Okay.” </p><p>“<i>You’re not mad?</i>”</p><p>“You were never mine to have.”</p><p>A story of love, sci-fi, and blowjobs. Mostly blowjobs.</p><p> </p><p>(Edits still being made)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backdoor Woman

Rose Yallow sat back in her seat, contemplating the number on her screen. She used to be on more than speaking terms with this guy but twelve years in England would estrange the best of friends. He was her first everything and now she couldn’t get up the nerve to call him. She tried to rationalize it- she was a famous author, she couldn’t force her fame onto him, it would just hurt him further. In her heart of hearts, she knew that she didn’t want to talk to him. The potential conversation scared her. Instead of pressing the call button, she set her phone down and leaned forward. As she powered up her Macbook and typed in her password, she thought back to how they met. They were taking Economy and the class was learning about mercantilism. To demonstrate, the teacher started an activity whereas there was a mother country and four colonies. She, in the folly of youth, had started calling him Daddy, because he was the mother country but he wasn’t a woman. So he became Daddy and she continued to call him that, all throughout high school.

She’d googled his name a few months back and his construction site was the first hit. She’d already combed through it so many times since then but she figured one more time wouldn’t hurt. As she read through it, _reliable_ , _safe_ , _helpful_ , she remembered that he’d went without a goodbye at the end of high school. Then again, they were never the greatest of friends. She finished reading the website and flipped her phone back over, his number still staring her in the face. She hit the call button and held it up to her ear, waiting.

The phone rung and rung, and Rose waited. Finally he picked up.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“Hello, it’s Rose.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other side. “ _I’m married_.”

“Okay.”

“ _You’re not mad?_ ”

“You were never mine to have.” and wow was that the truth, she thought.

“ _You still in England?_ ”

“Yeah. Hell knows why, it’s so cold.”

“ _You were never good in the cold_.”

“No.”

“ _So, why did you call me?_ ”

“I wanted to see you again.”

“ _I’m married._ ”

“You said that. I didn’t say anything about anything else, did I?”

“ _You never did._ ”

“True. How about I’ll fly out there and met you somewhere, your choice. You can leave at any time.”

“ _Fine. Flying Star on Rio Grande._ ”

“Okay.”

“ _When can you come out?_ ”

“When are you free?”

“ _Next week. On Tuesday._ ”

“I’ll be there.”

She hung up. There was nothing left to say and she needed to buy plane tickets. His business was in Albuquerque and she knew that damn city like the back of her hand. She’d fly out Monday, come back Thursday, have a day to herself and a day for her father. Her phone rang. She looked at the screen, _Cynthia_. She hit decline call. She hadn’t talked to her stepmother for twelve years and she wasn’t about to start. The bitch still called her everyday, like she was a replacement for her mother, bless her soul. She touched the mousepad, waking up her laptop and found the flights that she was taking. Then she wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Most of it was trash but she’d take it to her editor anyway and together they might be able to put some of it together into something useable.

Her phone went off again, this time playing the generic Apple ringtone (which she hated. Ben must have set it). Rose got up and shut her laptop. She walked out of her room and started making a dinner. Ben, a dark haired tall-man, noticed her moving around and put his arms around her waist. She stroked his fingers and he rested his head on her shoulders.

“Love, you okay?”

“Yes. I’m going to Albuquerque on Monday.”

“Business?”

“No, and not pleasure. More like obligation.”

“Oh.”

“Ben, I’d like to make dinner now.”

“I can do that.”

“The last time I let you, you made ramen.”

“You _like_ ramen.”

She threw up her hands, mock offended. “Is everyone trying to guilt trip me today?”

Ben smiled and unclasped his hands from her waist. She grabbed a pot and yoghurt container from the fridge. She slammed the pot down on the stove and ran the yoghurt container under hot water. She dumped it into the pot, revealing the contents not to be yoghut but a broth. As it melted, she sank into a chair and told Ben her story.

“So, back in the day, I knew this guy. And I called him Daddy. The funny thing was that he was shorter and skinnier than me. He was in no way like a father figure. It came about, me calling him Daddy, cause we were doing a lesson on mercantilism in Econ, in, uh, Year 10 for you, and he was the mother country but he wasn’t a chick so I started calling him Daddy. It went on and on, you know me,” She blushed. “This was happening for, like, a year and then in Year 11, I offered him something. He had something I wanted, namely a phone number for this other dude, who I’d promised this _other_ guy I’d text, and I said, ‘hey Tony, I’ll suck your dick if you give me the phone number’ and his eyes went all wide and I said, ‘no, Daddy, I’m not shitting you’ and he said yes. I got my phone number and he got a blowjob. However, Ben, as you know, I _really_ like blowing people. So I didn’t stop there. I kept going. At first, I pretended that I wanted some shit that he had and in exchange I offered to blow him, et cetera, et cetera. Then he caught on and he asked me, straight up, if I just liked giving blowjobs I said yeah and he was like ‘Then stop asking me for stuff cause we can set something up’. And we set up a time and a place and then it escalated to the point that we’d end up fucking in the bathrooms of wherever we were at.”

Ben stayed quiet and Rose started squirming. She was used to people staying quiet when she finished talking but not Ben. Ben, in the five years she’d known him and the three that they’d been dating, was rarely quiet. Now, though, he was silent.

“This is the man you’re going to go see?”

She started then nodded.

“Fine. You said it was out of obligation?”

“We have unfinished business.”

“What?”

“He got married. I got you. We haven’t spoken in twelve years.”

“Like your stepmother.”

“No. I actually like him.”

Ben tried not to laugh. Rose cracked a smile before leaping up to add a variety of vegetables to the broth and leaving it to simmer. They sat in companionable silence for some time until Ben broke it with:

“So you’re leaving Monday and will be back… when?”

“Thursday.”

“Okay. It’s at Heathrow?.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

“Bless.”

“Your soup’s done, by the way.”

She shot him a smile and took it off the burner. As Ben grabbed a ladle, she opened a cupboard and got two bowls. As she set them on the counter, he was laying out two spoons. She took the ladle from the table and began ladling the soup into the bowls. She laid them on the table and they began eating.

The next day, she wrote and wrote. She was improving. Sure the _New York Times_ had called her one of 2015’s best writers but that didn’t mean that she was any good. It was all her editor’s skills, not hers. Ben came in midday and managed to kick her ass out of her room. He was good at that. As they walked out of the house, she grabbed his hand and held on to it like it was a lifeline. And, in some ways, it was.

When they got back, he got her to pack, something she was bitterly procrastinating on. To pack, Rose reasoned, was to truly accept that she was leaving and going back to Albuquerque. She didn’t want to do that. Despite having lived most of her life to date there and loving every second, the place held a lot of bad memories- her mother’s death, her classmates’ funerals, her first suicide attempt. She wasn’t too anxious to return but she needed (she thought) to sort shit out with this guy. When she finished packing, she wandered out into the living room and saw Ben on the phone. He mouthed “ _take-out_ ” at her and she left him alone.

When the doorbell rang, she got up to get it and found a delivery person standing there with a pizza box. Ben came up behind her and handed the delivery person six pounds. She handed him the pizza and left.

“I know you don’t like my cooking but I don’t think you’re up for cooking so I got this,” He grinned at her, his long hair tied back in a ponytail, his earring gone for now.

She smiled and walked back to the kitchen. Ben followed and set the pizza down. When Rose reached for the plates, he stopped her with a wave of his hand and she plopped down into a chair and opened the box. What greeted her was a sea of yellow. She grabbed Ben’s hand. He’d gotten her pineapple pizza, which she loved. “Thank you.”

He waved her off. “You’re stressed and so I got you your favourite pizza topping. Relax.”

“No, you.”

“I _do_ have a deadline waiting for me the moment I step back into the office. I didn’t do any work on it until today, so I’m basically fucked over.”

“Eh, if you get fired, I’ll become your sugar daddy.”

“I don’t think you’re old enough.”

Rose smiled, appreciative that he’d ignored the daddy part. “And I don’t want you just cause you have a hot body and you’ll look good on my arm at parties.”

Ben laughed. “I rather think I’ll detract from your image at those big publishing parties you go to.”

“Nah, my editor said that she’d never met anyone as geeky as you. And there, that’s a compliment. Freaks become CEOs there. It makes no sense.”

“You work for a sci-fi publishing house,” Ben raised his eyebrows as if to say _what did you expect?_

“I don’t _work_ for anyone, except for my mind.”

“Oh you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Rose grinned lazily at Ben. “I also know that I am fucking stuffed and also totally tired so I’m going to go see if I can write any more and then go the fuck to bed cause soon I’m gonna to pass out.”

“I’m going to eat the rest of this, then,” he threatened.

“Go ahead!” She waved behind her and left. As she left, Ben shut the box and smiled. As Rose sat back down at her computer, she realised she had nothing left to say. She had no idea how to make the story go forward and it bugged her. While this had happened before, it was usually during the writing towards the end of the story, never in the middle. The middle period was when she was at her best and the words flowed from her mind to the screen. She couldn’t write any more and she sighed and shut her laptop. As she started getting ready for bed, her mind was a blank, lacking all the ideas that buzzed around in her head. When she was finally about to fall asleep, Ben came in and joined her. It was like a flipped switch in her brain and the ideas came back. She threw her arms around him and he pressed into her side.

When her alarm went off the next morning, she fumbled around for it on the bedside table and failed to find it. She groggily opened her eyes and saw Ben holding her phone, grinning like the Chesire Cat.

“I thought you might want to turn this off, so I grabbed it before you could.”

She grunted. He had the audacity to be ready and looked ready to go. She sighed. “I’m not getting out of this, am I?”

“Nope!”

“Fuck.”

She rolled out of bed onto the floor and army crawled to the closet. Ben watched in amusement until she reached the wardrobe and tried to open it. She cursed and he saw a speck of blood on the white paint. He walked over and dragged her up. She slumped over in his arms and he rolled his eyes. “You’re bleeding from the wardrobe, really?’’

“Fuck off. The edge is sharp. It should have stopped now anyway.”

He looked at her finger and the cut had indeed scabbed over. “You heal _fast_.”

“Once cut my hand open, like to the muscle, and my hand was healed by the next week. Imma freak…” She trailed off, half passing out again.

“Why are you so tired?”

“Don’t wanna go back. Also is four in morning.”

Ben sighed. “You promised.”

“No.”

“You did. C’mon, I’ll give you coffee.”

“How much? Wanna all the coffee.”

“Fine.”

Rose perked up at that, proving herself to be much more awake then she’d seemed. Ben dropped her and she pushed herself off the ground and followed him out the door to the kitchen. He grabbed a mug and poured the coffee into it. She made grabby motions with her hands and he handed it to her. Despite the steam coming off the surface, she gulped it down. Ben winced and she wiped her mouth and held out the mug. He poured more into it and she drank it. The cycle repeated until there was no more coffee in the carafe. Rose stood up and grinned at him. “I’m better now.”

“So you’re actually going to go?”

“Yeah. I bought the tickets _and_ I promised him.”

“You swore to never go back.”

“I was afraid I wouldn’t want to leave but it’s a really unhealthy place for me mentally so there’s that.”

“Last trip?”

“Last trip.”

She stood up and walked back to their bedroom to get dressed. When she came out, he whistled. “You don’t dress up like that for me!”

“That’s cause I love you.”

“But jeans and a hoodie? That’s low, for you.”

“Fuck off, it’s clean and not paint-splattered so I’ll be better dressed than most people there.”

“Wow.” He rolled his eyes and she smiled.

“Bye. I’ll call when I arrive.”

“Bye, thanks.” Ben kissed her cheek and kissed him back furiously.

“Why am I leaving you?” she whispered.

“Because you have to see this other guy,” he whispered back. “Now go.”

As he watched her go, he twisted the ring around his right ring finger. It wasn’t an engagement ring (she’d explained to him on their first anniversary) but rather a promise that she’d be there for him no matter what. He knew that she wouldn’t cheat, but he didn’t know the man and she _had_ tried to kill herself at age 15 (when she knew this guy) and he worried for her life. It took all of his self control to not go running after her and bring her back to him, where she’d be safe.

Rose hailed a cab and told the driver to go to the airport. As they drove her there, she thought about what a fabulous story this would make but she had a strict rule to not write about her own life. It hurt too much. As much as she loved Albuquerque and wanted to stay there, both her father and her brother insisted she go. Her father had forbad her from returning for at least ten years and she’d kept that promise but, truth be told, she missed the desert. England was nice and all but it rained all the time and was cold. She missed seeing the sun on a regular basis. Perhaps she could get Ben to move out there. However, in her heart of hearts, she knew that she wouldn’t move back, and Ben wouldn’t even consider it. He was too English and too invested in his work, no matter what he said.

The cabbie held out their hand, interrupting her train of thought as she paid them. As they helped her unload her trunk from the back of the cab, someone tapped her on her shoulder. She turned around and saw a stranger standing there with a big grin on their face. She looked them in the eye, too disoriented to comprehend what was going on and they squealed.

“You noticed me! I thought you would just brush me aside, cause I figured that you’d get so many other people talking to you and asking you to sign their books that another one wouldn’t matter so much, but you noticed _me_! I’ve never been happier!” With another squeal, they thrust a book at her. Peering at the cover, she read her own name on the cover and inwardly sighed.

“Hi, um, I have a flight to catch in, like, 15 minutes, so if you want to say anything more, now’s a really good time.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to ask for a signature, but I’m going to ask that you remember me.”

“I have a notoriously bad memory, like I don’t know if you saw the interview where the person asked me about the plot of _Digital Stone Age_ and I asked them if I really wrote that.”

“So you’re saying you don’t know?”

“Yeah. Listen, I’m sorry, and I _will_ try to remember but I don’t know.”

The cabbie handed her the suitcase and she thanked them, then turned back to the fan.

“I really need to make this flight, cause the connecting flight from JFK isn’t gonna work unless I make this one. I have to go. Are you sure you don’t want me to sign anything?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“You’re very much welcome.” And, throwing a smile at the beaming fan, she swung her bag across her chest and headed into the airport.

As Rose boarded her plane, the smell of it struck her. All Delta flights smelled the same and it brought back memories of flying with her mother and brother up to Montana to see their relatives. She shook her head, to clear it of thoughts about her mother. She took her seat, a nice aisle seat towards the front of the plane and stuck her earbuds in. She didn’t notice when the other two people took their seats, one of them with curly hair and the other with long straight hair. She didn’t notice as they kissed. Rose was completely absorbed in her music and, besides, she’d shut her eyes. She certainly didn’t note the similarity to her dead mother and broken father. No, their scenario wasn’t similar at all.

As the plane took off, the couple continued to make out. When the flight attendants came by with their safety instructions, they unstuck momentarily. Rose had taken one earbud out to listen, out of respect, but when the curly haired one noticed that she had done so, they poked their partner in the leg and gestured to her.

“Hey, sorry if we start distracting you.” The straight haired person grinned at her. Rose had enough with grinning people that day.

“Yeah, we know we’re quite hot,” the curly haired one smirked.

“People have found us very…”

“Errotic!” They chorused together and Rose cringed.

“Give this speech a lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine. I don’t care.”

They looked at each other and shrugged, then went back to devouring the other’s face. Rose popped her earbud back in and sat back. When the plane was high enough, she took out her Mac and started writing. She didn’t allow herself to get distracted until the flight attendant, looking petrified, tapped her on the shoulder and told her to put it away. She complied and went back to intently listening to her music.

When the plane landed, she got off and saw that the JetBlue terminal was just across the way from the Delta terminal, where she was. As she walked across, she noted three separate bookstores and resolved to go look at them when and if she had time. She didn’t, as the plane arrived soon after she sat down. She sighed and boarded the plane. When she sat down, she shut her eyes and passed out. She’d been in the air for nearly nine hours and she had five more to go. It was time to sleep.

When the flight attendant shook her awake, looking a lot less scared than the last one, she uncurled and stretched.

“Welcome to Albuquerque, ma’am,” the flight attendant gave her a perfunctory smile and Rose looked at them with a blank expression. The attendant wilted and left. She got off the plane and looked around her, inhaling the warm desert air with relief. She was home.

As she made her way through the Sunport, it struck her how well she still knew it. Rose felt that she’d never been away and felt Ben, England, her career, falling away from her. She was no longer a doctor of creative writing, but rather a teenager, scared to tell her father that she was dating a girl two years older than her. This illusion was abruptly shattered when she saw a life sized cutout of herself standing in the singular bookstore that the Sunport had. Rose covered her face and hurried past the bookstore. In any other city, she would have gotten more than her fair share of rude staring, but here, anything went. There were enough crazy people and drug addicts, that one decently dressed person covering her face as she walked past a bookstore, didn’t matter.

As she took the escalator down to the carport, she had to stop her muscle memory from walking into it. There wasn’t going to be any car with a smiling father waiting for her there. Instead, she hailed a cab and told them to take her to the Nativo Lodge. When they dropped her off, she paid them and went inside. Like everything so far, it was strangely familiar. She glanced around the lobby and saw her family there, laughing and 15 years younger. They were celebrating her bat mitzvah and generally enjoying themselves. Her grandmother’s boyfriend gestured for her to join them. He’d died four years ago. Rose shook her head again, trying to clear it of memories.

She approached the reception desk and told the receptionist there her name. They smiled and gave her the key to her room. She entered and passed out until morning. Jet lag was a bitch.

The next morning greeted her with a craving for coffee and Ben. As she fumbled around on the bed, looking for him, she remembered where she was and sat up, awake in a manner that would have astonished Ben, was he there. She was known for not being able to get out of bed in the morning. Rose glanced around her, properly taking everything in after the sun was risen. Then she glanced at the clock and cussed. She’d overslept. She was meeting Antonio at 12:00 and it was 10:30. She didn’t have a rental car and knew that the bus route would take 55 minutes. In other words, she had 6 minutes to get ready and get down to the bus stop. In Rose’s time, that meant she was fucked. Perhaps, in retrospect, she should have booked her flight for Sunday. She would keep that in mind, but she knew that there was no way in hell she was coming back after this. She ran around the room, looking for her clothes, some food, anything that would help her get ready faster. She finally found what clothes she needed and threw them on. She grabbed her purse and had a mini panic attack about how she was going to pay the bus driver before remembering that she’d exchanged some money at home before she’d left.

She took the elevator downstairs and ran to the bus stop. When the bus came, she boarded and swore, looking around. The buses hadn’t changed much either. The driver looked at her strangely and she apologised, paid and sat down. The person across from her started ogling her and Rose sighed and took out her phone. They got up and sat next to her.

“Hey, pretty girl, why don’t I take you home?” they purred into her ear. She pulled up a picture of her and Ben on her phone and showed it to them.

“This. Is. My. Boyfriend. I’m not interested.”

“Sure you are. Forget him. I’ll do _anything_ you ask of me. I _promise_.”

“I want you to leave.”

“Anything but that.”

Then, suddenly, she recognised them. “Andie?”

“How do you know my name?”

“I’m Rose Yallow.”

Andie moved back to the other side of the bus. Rose grinned. Who said being suicidal and depressed in high school didn’t pay off?

When the bus got to her stop, she got up, shot a grin at Andie and left. She had another bus to catch and hopefully she wouldn’t run into any one that she knew from high school. As she boarded the next bus, there was no cussing and no more high school classmates. This ride went by without a hitch and she smiled and thanked the driver when she got off. She walked to the strip mall that the Flying Star was at and poked her head inside. Tony wasn’t there yet so she didn’t go any further. Instead she walked into the bookstore next to it. Instantly her mood changed. Bookworks had always succeeded in making her much more satisfied that she’d been before.

As she walked in, a salesperson came up to her and asked if they could help her with anything before they looked at her face and walked away. Rose frowned but before she had time to process it fully, she was swarmed by people holding her books and begging for autographs. She felt a pen get pressed into her hand and got books shoved into her face. She was reminded of the fan at Heathrow who had been so polite and respectful and only asked her to remember them. Rose enjoyed being around fans like that. She started signing books and smiling politely as she heard how much people loved her books, how much she’d changed their lives and then she saw the clock. It was 12:00. She looked behind her, through the big bay windows and saw Tony walking up to Flying Star.

She tried to break free of the mob and couldn’t. Rose swore like a sailor and suddenly a pathway formed. Rose ran through it and was relieved to see that none of the mob was following her. She met him in line and he turned around with a start.

“Oh. Hi, Rose.”

“Hey Tony.”

He looked relieved. “Um, so how’s your life?”

“Pretty good. Yours? I saw your construction company.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

She fell silent as did Tony. They both had forgotten how awkward things were when she wasn’t wrapping her lips around his dick. He seemed to be thinking the same thing as he began shifting around, uncomfortable. She decided to break the silence.

“What did you tell your wife about this?”

“Nothing. I’m on lunch break and she doesn’t care.”

“Ah. So, you really did keep your promise to stay in the city.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you would.”

“I knew you’d leave after…”

“I slit my wrists and ate a bottle of pills?”

“Yeah, that.”

“My father made me promise not to come back after ten years and I kept that promise.”

“You went to England, right?”

“Yeah.”

He whistled, impressed. “Damn!”

“Always a goal of mine.”

“I know.”

“Yeah.”

They found themselves at the counter. Without looking at the menu, Rose asked for the mac n cheese. He raised his eyebrows at her and she looked at him and shrugged. He then asked for the cheesecake and it was her turn to raise her eyebrow.

When they sat down, it was in silence that lasted for a good two minutes until Tony broke it.

“On the phone, you said that you said that you wanted to see me again. Why?”

“I figured we had unfinished business.”

“Do we?”

She didn’t answer but instead watched him fiddle with his napkin until it turned into a paper mess on his lap. He finally broke the silence. “We didn’t say anything to each other when we parted ways last.”

“That’s a nice way of saying that you never said goodbye.” Rose muttered into her glass of water, breathing in the fumes of the shitty Albuquerque water that she’d pretended not to miss.

“Whoa, calm down!” He put up his hands, as if to say _don’t shoot!_ “Clearly this is a misunderstanding because we never agreed on saying goodbye to each other. It was a no ropes sorta thing, right?”

She frowned. “It’s not right to form an emotional connection to someone and then not sever it if one or both parties conclude that it’s finished.”

“Emotional connection? Rose, we fucked each other in fast food bathroom stalls.”

“You know what, Tony? Fuck you.”

“You did. Several times.”

Rose couldn’t help, despite her anger, smiled. Tony had always had that effect on her. It was one of the things that kept her close towards him during high school.

“Jesus Christ. I’m sorry.”

He frowned at her. “About what?”

“Losing my shit.”

“You didn’t. It was far worse in school anyway.”

“I kinda did, though. I improved so much during college.”

“You went to college?”

Rose nodded. “I became a doctor of Creative Writing.”

Tony grinned at her. “Good. You deserve that doctorate.”

“Yeah. Who woulda thought that the broken soul that I was would become a doctor?”

“I don’t know. You were always much smarter than everyone else.”

“Not Robin.”

“Robin is a secretary for the Marriott. She’s no doctor.”

“Oh, well, um… Let’s focus on why I’m here, shall we?”

“I thought we just covered that?.”

Rose grimaced. Saying this outloud was going to be hard. “You’re the one loose end I still have. Everyone else from high school is wrapped up but you. Even Lauren.”

“You said goodbye to _Lauren_?”

“Yes.”

“Never thought that would happen. Until you came up to me with the _proposal_ , I thought that you two were dating.”

“Everyone thought that. She actually let me go. Said that I would recover better without her.”

“Fuck that.”

“It turned out to be true.”

Tony shook his head. “It’s still not right. You two were as close as sisters. Giving up on you like that isn’t right.

Once again they fell into silence, but this time it was because their food had come and they both were hungry, given the rate that the food disappeared from their plate. When she was done, Rose delicately wiped her mouth.

“Twelve years and the food hasn’t gotten any better.”

Tony said nothing as he had cheesecake in his mouth. When he’d swallowed the cheesecake, he grinned, nicely ignoring the change of topic. “I know! It’s kinda ridiculous.”

“One would hope to see at least some improvement, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, back to high school. You had all those girlfriends and in between them, there I was. Providing some sexual relief, as well as someone who you could bitch to without fear of judgement. Then no communication for twelve years. That was mostly my fault, but a goodbye would have been nice.”

“Fine. Next time this comes up, I’ll be sure to wish you a goodbye.”

Rose rolled her eyes.

“Fine,” Tony continued. “When we go back outside and never see each other again, we’ll both say a proper goodbye. Deal?”

She stuck out her hand and he mirrored her. “Deal.” They shook. When the waitress came by, Rose picked up the bill and Tony didn’t protest.

They walked outside together after she’d paid and hugged.

“Goodbye, Rosie.”

“Goodbye, Tony. Enjoy your life!”

“And the same to you.”

She said nothing in return but waved him to his car, a dirt splattered white pick-up. As she watched him drive off, she realised that for the first time since she’d moved to England, she wanted to take something sharp to her body. Tony’s leaving was like a fresh cut to her skin. Rose took out a white iPhone and dialed a number without a 505 area code.

“ _Rose? Are you okay?_ ” Ben’s voice was a soothing balm. 

She sniffled. “No. I hate _everything_.”

“ _I know. What do you need from me?_ ” 

“Just to hear your voice.”

“ _Okay._ ” He paused. “ _How did the meeting go?_ ”

“Fine.”

“ _Come home, while you still can._ ”

She nodded. “I will. I love you so fucking much, you don’t even know.”

“ _Oh Rosie, I love you too._ ”

“Oh fuck, Ben.”

“ _Reroute your flight, maybe?_ ”

Rose sniffled again. “Okay. Imma go now, and do that. I love you.”

She hung up and rerouted her flight. High school had never been her forte, anyway, and sometimes home wasn’t what she thought it was. (Spoiler alert: home was Ben and bland food and too cold weather; not her father and classmates and green chile and 100 degree summers.)

**Author's Note:**

> title is a variation on the doors backdoor man. 
> 
> so some of this actually happened to me. by some of this, i mean the econ lesson and the eventual calling of daddy to a boy skinnier and shorter than me and the falling madly in love with benjamin cook. like seriously _damn_. anyway, he (not benjamin cook, the boy) asked me to stop calling him daddy. i complied and therefore this story will never come to fruition. (bless) 
> 
> also hey, come say hi on my [tumblr](http://wifislittlebitch.tumblr.com/)


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